Firefly at my house today from 2pm. There may be chocolate sauerkraut cake if it works. Bring drinks and snacks if you wish but don't feel obliged. Bring your knitting too if you like. Takeaway in the evening for those that want it.

I will be cooking pies (and my knitting ability has fallen by the wayside, although a piece of random black wool with knots in is sitting behind me with a needle in), but I expect a full report on the sauerkraut cake. I am still intrigued...

Just wanted to ask you how long you left the cake in the oven - recipe on blog says 30-50 mins, which seems like quite a wide margin. Does it conform to the cocktail stick test? Or is it meant to come out 'soggy' in the middle and firm up upon cooling? I'd like to make it some time, so I hope you don't mind if I quiz you on how you did it.

60 minutes. I checked it after 40, and it seemed not to be burning on top, so I left it another 10. I stuck a fondue fork in and there was still some liquidyness, so I put foil on top and gave it another 10. So 60 minutes seems to be right in my oven. Didn't do the fork thing again though, so don't know what it was like after 60 minutes.

Nope, cake is still here; it's been sitting in the fridge wrapped in foil, so I don't know if it'll still be moist. (I meant to send it via Juliet, but forgot.)

I'm not sure how much the sauerkraut actually added to the flavour, because it was the first chocolate cake I've made in many years so I didn't really have anything to compare it to. Is it plausible that the liquid it released during cooking would have made the cake moister? Or is “moistness” in cakes entirely down to fat content?

Golly, I didn't know you were keeping it for me, sorry! Would you be around tomorrow, if I came around to nab it?

I'm no cake expert at all, I've probably made about five in the last decade. But I suspect that the sauerkraut does contribute to the moistness. A carrot cake is much moister than a Victoria sponge, despite having less fat (for the same flour), and I'd always assumed that was liquid released by the carrots.

Thanks a lot for that. It wasn't stale at all, in fact it was still very moist. The first mouthful took me by surprise, I think because (for me, at any rate) denseness in chocolate cakes is associated with richness, but this was rather dense without being particularly rich at all. I don't know if it was because I was anticipating it, but the consistency did remind me of carrot cake.

Yaa Asentawa Tropicals, Afro-Caribbean Foods etc., is between Lloyds TSB and Wimpy, just before the Blue Anchor pub. I may not have spelt it right...